Natural
Capital in the Caribbean and South Atlantic Overseas
Territories: Valuation, Vulnerability and Monitoring
Change

Background

The UK Overseas Territories are highly dependent on the natural
environment for their economic and social well-being. The
environment provides goods and services of significant cultural and
economic value, and provides a key role in protecting man-made
assets and protecting human life. The natural environment is
susceptible to damage from human activities, resulting in
significant loss of value to the economies of the Territories and
an increased risk from natural disasters such as
hurricane-generated storm surges and flooding.

JNCC embarked on the ‘Natural Capital in the Caribbean
and South Atlantic Overseas Territories’ project, funded by
the Conflict,
Stability and Security Fund (CSSF), in late 2016.
The project will provide an assessment of natural capital in
a number of the UK’s Caribbean and South Atlantic Overseas
Territories, and will build capacity to monitor environmental
change and integrate environmental evidence into economic policy
making and infrastructure planning.

The project builds on a body of existing work and techniques
supported and pioneered by the UK Government in the two
regions. Working with the OT governments, and with a
number of research organisations and private sector specialists,
the project will be using economic assessments and
analysis, spatial mapping, and satellite data to:

assess the economic and
social value of the terrestrial and marine natural environment for
each of the Territories;

integrate natural capital
valuations into national mapping (GIS) to define the spatial
distribution of the assets (value mapping), and to promote the
integration of such valuations into planning and policy
making.

In addition, the projects place an emphasis on
capacity building, skill sharing and knowledge exchange
through:

On-island or regional training programmes to
build long-term capacity in the OTs;

Building regional Territory networks to
encourage territory to territory support;

Development of outreach programmes to cultivate links between
the Territories and adjacent islands and states, in order to
encourage wider regional exchange of information and ideas, and the
development of partnerships and collaborations.

Outputs

Reports on JNCC's Overseas Territories natural capital work will
be posted on this page as the work draws to a close. Documents will
include natural capital reports for individual Territories,
synthesising the results of the work programme in each OT;
underpinning reports based on projects with a specific technical
focus; reports on training programmes undertaken to support
building capacity in the OTs, and the results of the initial
consultations used to define individual OT priorities for the work
programme. A priority for JNCC has been to work with each Territory
to ensure the natural capital work programme supports their own
aspirations for environmental management and economic development
whilst building an understanding of the importance of natural
capital for policy making and planning. The programme is also
designed to ensure that new data are made available to the
Territories, and new human capacity developed, to allow individual
OTs to build on the CSSF supported programme in the future